Multimedia

Narratives

Site Information

Memoirs & Diaries - Destructive Technology at the Somme

In respect to new methods and machines, the present French and British offensive
is the last word.

Sponsored Links

The aim of any offensive in modern warfare is the destruction
of the enemy. This is the object of the present offensive, the idea being to
enclose us in a tactical ring by simultaneous bombardment with long-range guns
from the front and the rear.

Accordingly the greedy beast began eating at the
back lines of the German front. First of all our third and second trenches were
incessantly bombarded, mostly by heavy artillery, of which the enemy had
concentrated unprecedented masses in the sector of attack.

It was dugouts which
had to be battered down, so that at the moment of assault all the defenders,
except a few survivors, and all the machine guns might be buried. Our second and
third trenches were bombarded in order to prevent our bringing up reserves.

For
the same reason all the communication trenches leading from the rear to the
front position were kept under incessant fire. On the Somme every one of our
columns had a good communication trench which led from the headquarters of the
battalion to the front trench.

But the attack against our front from the rear extended still further. All the
main and side roads and all the crossroads were kept under fire so that
approaching troops, munitions, supplies, and provisions had to pass through
several lines of fire.

Bombarding villages and places behind the front where the
various reserves are supposed to be quartered is an old trick of the British and
French, but this time the principle was carried out more consistently and
recklessly than ever. All places up to a distance of 10 miles behind the front
were brought under incessant heavy artillery bombardment, which often started
actual fires, thanks to the incendiary shells used by the enemy.

The battering down of our advanced trenches was almost exclusively left to the
heavy artillery and trench mortars, especially the latter. The French have made
great improvements in this weapon lately. For the destruction of our trenches
they exclusively employed those of the heaviest calibre, and they now throw
their mines with greater accuracy and over longer ranges than formerly.

Opposite
my company no fewer than six mortars were placed. They were worked
uninterruptedly, throwing hundreds of aerial torpedoes on our position from the
first to the third trenches. They tore up our wire obstacles from the ground,
poles and all, and threw them all over the place, crushing the dugouts if they
fell on them, and damaging the trenches.

In a very short time great portions of
our trenches had been flattened out, partly burying their occupants. This fire
lasted for seven days, and finally there came a gas attack, also of an improved
kind.

The deepest impression left on me was not a feeling of horror and terror in face
of these gigantic forces of destruction, but an unceasing admiration for my own
men. Young recruits who had just come into the field from home, fresh
twenty-year-old boys, behaved in this catastrophic ploughing and thundering as
if they had spent all their life in such surroundings, and it is partly thanks
to them that the older married men also stood the test so well.